John Logan’s solo show “I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers” skips as lightly across its subject as a shard of shale whipping across a pond. Bette Midler, making her first Broadway appearance as someone other than herself in more than 40 years (she replaced as Tzeitel in the original production of “Fiddler on the Roof” in the late 1960s), is disappointingly content to reprise the Divine Miss M persona that she delivered so successfully in three Broadway concerts in the 1970s. Thanks to the lazy writing and acting, Mengers goes missing.
A quick tour of the Internet turns up a 1975 Mike Wallace “60 Minutes” profile of the famed Hollywood super agent—for which admittedly she must have been on her best behavior—that shows just how far off the mark Midler is. It also turns up a 2011 Deadline.com obit by Nikki Finke that offers a richer, more rounded portrait than Logan’s glossy caricature. This was one interesting lady, but not onstage at the Booth Theatre.
Set designer Scott Pask has stylishly re-created Mengers’ lush Hollywood digs. We are in her living room, where Midler is perched by director Joe Mantello on the couch for the entire 90-minute show,
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